Employment Retaliation Cases

What do whistleblowers and class actions have to do with one another? Until now, very little. That is changing according to a recent announcement by noted whistleblower attorney Brian Mahany. He claims defective Takata airbags have killed 13 people and seriously injured up to 200 others.

Takata pleaded guilty to criminal charges and is now insolvent after being hit with almost $1 billion in fines.

Mahany says that the auto manufacturers share equal blame. This week he announced an investigation of Volkswagen and Audi. He seeks both inside whistleblowers and owners of cars affected by the recalled airbags.

According to records from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, approximately 42 million cars have been recalled because of potentially explosive airbags.

Drivers and front seat passengers in high heat and high humidity areas are most at risk of explosions. (If you aren’t sure if your car is on the recall list or is even safe to drive, check the NHTSA Takata Recall Database.)...

In April, 2015, we reported on the $130,000 fine imposed by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) on Houston-based KBR for drafting employee confidentiality agreements which might discourage whistleblowing in cases of corporate malfeasance. This was a clear sign from SEC to all employers in the sector that such internal agreements would not be tolerated.

Since then, the SEC has been working on creating a more propitious terrain for willing whistleblowers to speak up about fraudulent conduct.

On October 24th, 2016, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations at SEC announced that it was scanning numerous employee agreements, looking for language it considers contrary to its disclosure and whistleblowing regulations....

UBER national lawsuit? After settling the Uber driver lawsuits in California and Massachusetts, the company is up against its greatest legal challenge yet – a high profile activist driver with a billion dollar lawyer known for holding mega corporations accountable.
UBER is arguably the gig economy's biggest financial success. In mid-2015, it was valued at $50 billion. By January 2016, the last round of investments reportedly brought it up to $62.5 billion. The transportation giant...

Thursday, July 30, seven US Senators, advocacy groups and individuals assembled in a private luncheon to applaud the unanimous Senate resolution declaring July 30th as National Whistleblower Appreciation Day – a day to honor whistleblowers and provide impetus for stronger whistleblower legal protections.

The declaration falls on the 237th anniversary of the first whistleblower law, enacted with zero dissent by the Continental Congress on July 30, 1778. The original Continental Congress document proclaimed, “That it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or any other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge.”

Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus Members’ Victory

The gathering of approximately 200 people included Chairman and Vice Chairman of the bipartisan Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus, Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), Caucus members Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Mark Kirk (R-IL), members of the U.S. Department of Justice, state Attorneys General, whistleblowers, and renowned whistleblower attorneys....

A former Walgreens employee received a $1.1 million punitive damage award for what the court found to be Walgreens' retaliation in firing him for alerting the government to the company's overbilling practices.

The False Claims Act (FCA) empowers employees to initiate legal action against wrongdoing companies for defrauding the government. However, many people who identify their employers' bad behavior fear coming forward, because they don't want to lose their jobs, face social isolation at work or endure other types of retaliation....